A lot of people have tunnel vision about who their ideal client is.
And therefore they’re looking (and speaking) right past the kind of person who might actually pay them the most and value their work the most.
For example, I often hear from non-business coaches (such as those in the health, relationship, and personal development niches):
“Coaches aren’t my target audience. ‘Regular people’ are.”
And I’ll say:
“Really? How do you know that coaches couldn’t benefit from what you offer?”
And they’ll say something like:
“Well, they probably don’t need me. I work a lot on limiting beliefs/being more present/getting clear on what you want/[insert whatever is the main focus of their method] and coaches have already learned about all that – in fact it’s what they help others with.”
My reply is usually:
“Hmm. Don’t you have your own coaches to help you with that stuff in your own life even though you’ve learned plenty about it already and help others with it?”
And they usually say:
“Oh, now that you mention it… yeah! Just because I know this stuff doesn’t mean I can ‘do it on myself’. And sometimes my coaches have an area of specialized knowledge that goes a little further than what I know already, too…”
And I’ll say:
“Uh huh…” [wide eyes and vigorous nodding]
Sometimes I’ll even share with them that I was once in a five-figure mindset program and the majority of the people asking questions on the calls were mindset coaches.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it! 😉
As another example, people are often surprised to learn that I have hired (high-ticket) coaches to work with me on boundaries.
This is despite the fact that I’ve been passionately studying and reading about the subject of boundaries for more than 14 years, often get asked for advice on the subject, and even at one point thought I was going to build a business around it.
Does that mean I know everything there is to know about the subject, don’t ever need help or advice myself, and can always see my own blind spots?
Of course not!
It’s notable that my coaches in this area said that they loved having me as a client precisely BECAUSE I already knew a lot about their subject matter.
That meant they got to answer the “Ph.D-level” questions and challenges, instead of the beginner-level ones. It stretched them, and they loved that.
And of course they loved that I paid their fee with no objections and (in some cases) no sales call.
Advanced clients rarely question the value of having high-level support (whether or not they’ve invested in such support previously!).
As another example, about one-quarter of my own clients have been other messaging experts who were already successfully helping others with messaging – yet they wanted to see what I would say about THEIR messaging.
(This wasn’t a case of their wanting to be business coaches yet not having the skills, or wanting to hire me so they could copy my methods. No! They’re some of the most gifted and skilled people in the business – you’ve almost certainly heard some of their names, and maybe even worked with them yourself.)
I always love those clients because we have the most high-level, sophisticated conversations. It’s fascinating and I love it. They s-t-r-e-t-c-h me like I’ve never been stretched before.
And I live for that kind of experience. If I’m not growing, I’m dying. (If you’re that kind of person too, you know exactly what I mean!)
This is the case even with my clients who AREN’T messaging experts. They’re still such advanced thinkers and already great writers and communicators.
We’re talking about the most nuanced and subtle changes that they can make to how they’re wording things and how they’re setting up their business model.
If you’re someone who wants to attract high(er) ticket buyers with the greatest of ease (the types of people who wouldn’t dream of giving you an “objection” to your price or to anything else, who don’t need a high pressure call to be convinced that it’s important to do your program, etc.)…
…might I suggest taking a second (or tenth, or 200th) look at how you’re defining your “ideal” client?
It’s NOT necessarily who you’ve attracted or worked with in the past.
That’s just who you know you can get, and who your current system is designed to attract.
It’s not necessarily who you deep-down WANT to be working with the most, or who sees the most value, or who would get best results.
Very often, that best-result-getting, highest-paying, no-objection-giving client ISN’T someone who’s “behind” you in their journey.
Rather, it’s someone who’s your peer in a lot of ways – maybe even more advanced than you in others.
This idea is a mindf**k for many people initially because they are so accustomed to being in the “one-up” position – the one who “knows more,” the one who other people rely on for answers, etc. – while their client is in the “one-down” position.
In a way, that’s a much more comfortable position to be in. You’re “in control,” in a sense – because you have, and know, things that they don’t.
But also, in another sense, it’s NOT comfortable because it’s so much harder to convince them to be your client and accept the help in the first place.
Sometimes, in order to convince them, you have to do and say things you’d really rather not do or say, and diminish yourself – becoming someone you’d really rather not become.
(Again, if you’ve been there, you know exactly what I mean…)
Of course, with the “peer client,” you’re also uncomfortable – but it’s the GOOD kind of discomfort, the kind that ultimately leads to growth.
Not the kind that feels like selling your soul.
So pick your poison. I pick growth 100 times out of 100 🙂
I’ll end this post by sharing a nugget on HOW you can actually set up your marketing and selling process to attract the “peer clients” – the sophisticated folks that you deep-down want to be working with.
I’ve developed a whole system for this, which has become known as the Strong Method™.
There’s a blueprint for how we write our client-attracting content (and in a moment I’ll share a link to it).
And in this content framework, we write about how our ideal clients can solve challenges they’re experiencing (typically one challenge/problem per post, and one insight per post as to how to solve it).
What’s most important, though, is how you choose the problems and insights that your content will focus on.
The problems should be the kinds of things that an advanced client would wonder about.
And the insights should be deep enough that they’re the things that will actually solve the problem at its root – not the superficial stuff that the advanced client has heard and tried a million times.
One time I saw a post in my Facebook group that began, “If you don’t have time to work on your business, it’s because you haven’t put a schedule into place on when you’ll work!”
D’ya think that’s the kind of thing that would impress a sophisticated client?
Their problems are much more specific than “I don’t have time to work on my business.”
And telling them that they simply need a schedule is probably going to make them laugh out loud because at this point they’ve explored the problem from so many angles and tried so many ways to fix it. You can bet they’ve tried putting a schedule into place.
At this point it’s probably something way deeper – something very specific about their mindset, beliefs, attachments, whatever the case may be – and if you know what it is and share it, that very specific insight in your content is what’s going to blow their mind and have them reach out to you.
When I work with clients on their content, I love pushing them to come up with the absolute deepest insight – the deepest reason why an advanced client wouldn’t have a result yet.
They always know what it is – but rarely have they actually shared it in content because they’ve been taught that content should be more superficial in order to supposedly draw people in to be curious to learn more of the deeper stuff.
Except that’s rarely what happens – you usually end up attracting the less-advanced clients who haven’t heard the superficial stuff before and are in awe of you! 😉
Which is exactly how people start to develop the belief that more-advanced clients aren’t out there or don’t exist. But that’s a topic for another post.
Anyway – helping people to tweak their content to attract more-advanced clients is a big part of what I do in my 30-day 1:1 intensive.
And beyond that (before we even work on the content), I also help them to get clear on who this advanced client actually is for their work, and how to articulate that.
If needed, we even work on tweaking their offer itself so it contains more of the things that an advanced client would want, and less of the things that they wouldn’t.
And of course we also work on writing up the offer itself in the 500-word Strong Method™ posting style, so that advanced clients can easily see everything they want to know at a glance, and immediately appreciate that this offer is exactly what they both want and need.
We even talk about simple strategies for getting more advanced clients onto your friends list, if you want help with that.
If you’re interested in this 30-day intensive to get my help with this stuff, the next step is to send me a DM on Facebook – and we’ll have a quick chat to see if it’s a good fit.
You can see my brief summary of the 30-day intensive here.
Now, if you want to learn more about the Strong Method™ blueprints before reaching out to me, here are a couple of links.
Here’s a training on how to write value content for advanced clients.
And here’s a post on how to construct the 500-word offer summary.
Have you ever worked with “peer clients” before? If yes, how’d it go? If not, have you ever considered it?
I’d love to know. 😍